New faith communities are appearing across the U.S.. Many of them bear little resemblance—on the surface—to ‘church’ in its conventional form. But when we look a little deeper we see striking continuity with the most deeply rooted practices of the Christian faith in community.What are those practices? What do these unconventional, alternative faith communities look like? How are they, perhaps, indicators of a hopeful new future for the church? And what can we learn from them?...

Change isn’t always easy or intuitive. How Your Congregation Learns introduces churches and leaders—both lay and ordained—to the process of the learning journey. By understanding learning dynamics and working to become a learning community, the congregation will be able to move more purposefully to achieve its goals.Congregations face many kinds of challenges. Some are mundane: the roof leaks; the parking lot needs repaving; the microphones don’t work well. Some tests are transcend...

Building communicate. Stained glass windows, high altars, multi-purpose worship/gymnasium spaces, Plexiglas pulpits, padded pews--these and all other architectural elements say something about a congregation's theology and mission. They point to a faith community's beliefs about worship, identity, purpose, and more. From the stark simplicity of a Quaker meetinghouse to the splendor of a Romanesque Revival building, sacred spaces speak loudly. What they say can either reinforce a congregati...

Living Our Story explores how good narrative work—the retrieval, construction, and performance of valued stories—takes place in ministry. Authors Larry A. Golemon, Lee Ramsey, N. Graham Standish, Tim Shapiro, Carol Johnson, Mike Mather, Niles Elliot Goldstein, and Diana Butler Bass examine this question from a variety of perspectives, including the role of the pastor or rabbi as narrative leader, the sacred and mundane stories that shape congregational life and identity, storytelling as a ...

The formative power of a congregation serves as a primary catalyst for human development. A congregation also forms a person’s life. Congregations are often well-versed in matters of Christian formation and spiritual maturation. But what about how human beings develop as people? Insights from human development, also known as developmental psychology, provide an additional lens through which one can understand how humans are formed throughout life. Working with 30 congregations, the authors...

Close to 60 percent of young people who went to church as teens drop out after high school. Now the bestselling author of unChristian trains his researcher's eye on these young believers. Where Kinnaman's first book unChristian showed the world what outsiders aged 16-29 think of Christianity, You Lost Me shows why younger Christians aged 16-29 are leaving the church and rethinking their faith.Based on new research, You Lost Me shows pastors, chur...

As Helen Keller observed, "Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing."To Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, so much of how we have learned to experience and understand the faith has been divorced from the overarching adventure inherent in our God and in our calling. This book is a corrective...

Small groups are a great place to connect with other churchgoers, but many wonder, is this all there is? Is sitting in a living room, talking about a book or watching a video the extent of what we can do together? Isn't being a Christian community about something more than this?Pastor and author Scott Boren thinks so. In this latest release from missional thinktank Allelon, Boren gives leaders and members of small groups the tools they need to make an impact on their communities. B...

"A pre-modern baseball umpire would have said something like this: 'There's balls, and there's strikes, and I call 'em as they are.' The modernist would have said, 'There's balls, and there's strikes, and I call 'em as I see 'em.' And the postmodernist umpire would say, 'They ain't nothing until I call 'em.'" With that humorous quote, Ravi Zacharias illustrates the challenge postmodernism poses to Christians passionate about evangelism. How do you communicate truth to a world that isn't su...

In a time when the need for and the relevance of the Gospel has seldom been greater, the relevance of the church has seldom been less. The Shaping of Things to Come explores why the church needs to rebuild itself from the bottom up. Frost and Hirsch present a clear understanding of how the church can change to face the unique challenges of the twenty-first century. This missional classic has been thoroughly revised and updated.

We are not alone.God is present with us. And God gives us companions on the journey. A spiritual director is one such companion, offering spiritual guidance to helpmake sense of the faith journeyinterpret the significant markers on the roadencourage us, particularly through the more difficult transitions and valleys of our pilgrimageand, most of all, to notice the ministry of the Spirit in our livesGordon Smith writes:Even if we ha...

In the pages of this book, Alan Hirsch takes us on a really deep dive into the fivefold (APEST) typology of ministry as articulated in Ephesians 4:1-16, but he takes us to a depth and scope that few (if any) have ventured before. By laying out the most comprehensive model of APEST to date--one that incorporates deep theology as well as innovative practice--Hirsch once again demonstrates an almost uncanny capacity to change not only the nature of the conversation itself, but also the scorec...